SHELBURNE  Nova Scotias core group of licensed seal
hunters want to work but are seldom allowed, the Commons standing
committee of fisheries and oceans was told here Thursday.

"Theres
117 of us," said Robert Courtney, a Cape Breton fisherman
from the Cape North area.

"I
aint supposed to be here today. Im supposed to be
in court in Sydney . . . for trying to harvest seals,"
Mr. Courtney told MPs who took their committee meeting on a
road trip to hear about grey seals.

"We
got the manpower to do it, (but) we aint allowed where
the seals are," he said.

Grey
seals congregate on a few select islands, most of which are
protected sanctuaries, he said.

Mr.
Courtney and some other sealers took 600 greys off an island
recently, he said, noting thats why he was supposed to
be in court.

"The
job of this committee will be to study this issue and make some
recommendations," said chairman and South Shore MP Gerald
Keddy.

Many
fishing industry sources addressed the committee and said a
grey seal cull is needed now.

"We
have to get over our fear that some tourists will say, We
cant go to Nova Scotia because they kill seals,
" said Glenn Wadman, operations manager at D.B. Kenney
Fisheries Ltd. on Brier Island.

"These
same tourists will say we cant eat Nova Scotia fish because
they have worms," he said.

Twenty
years ago, he said, most fish plant workers found only one or
two wormy fish per shift. Now, he said, fish are heavily infested.
The worms come from seal feces, research has shown.

The
quality of finished product suffers because fillets are sometimes
only fit to be packaged as fish bits after the worms are picked
out of them, said Mr. Wadman.

DFO
scientist Mike Hammill said researchers sample seal feces and
analyze stomach contents and also look at fatty acids in seal
tissue to determine what the grey seals are eating.

Researchers
determined that seals dont always eat a lot of cod. Quite
often, he said, the seals eat species that arent as commercially
important, such sand lance and redfish.

But
the amount of cod making up a grey seals diet can jump
to a high of 40 per cent or a low of 10 per cent, depending
on the location and time of year, he said.

The
grey seal population is now estimated to be 260,000-strong in
Atlantic Canada, up from 20,000 in the 1970s.

Sable
Island and the Scotian Shelf are where most of the seal congregate,
said Mr. Hammill.

This
years grey seal harvesting quota is 2,100 in the Gulf
of St. Lawrence and 8,300 on the Scotian Shelf, although only
1,800 have been taken so far, he said.

"This
winter we intend to carry out another survey," said Mr.
Hammill.